Sunday, December 14, 2008

We caught up with Bastian Conrad,who runs an excellent Marlovian site based in Munich, Germany. He is a retired professor of neurology and former chair of the Clinical Department of Neurology of the Technical University of Munich, Bavaria. Prior to this, he served as head of the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology at the Univesity of Göttingen. Bastian is the author of several books on neurological topics.

Q: Bastian, thanks for joining us. What prompted you to create a Marlovian website?

Bastian: Well, I've been interested in the authorship question since I was fourteen, when my father read out of Calvin Hoffman's book to me and my sisters. During my career, there was not enough time to cultivate this hobby, but now in my retirement I enjoy studying, writing, and reflecting about unsolved questions.

I created the website for many reasons. One, the Marlowe theory is an absolutely exciting and fascinating story. Two, there is almost no knowledge in German-speaking countries about Marlowe, and I estimate one percent has ever heard of his name. Compare this to Shakespeare! Three, the reason why people cannot accept a real conspiracy theory is that they have not the time to deal with so many facts, arguments, and plausibilities; and hopefully I could facilitate the gathering of information for people. Four, today's altered possibilities of getting access to all existing sources via the new media (especially the Internet) will change the attitude and approaches toward the authorship problem in younger generations; they will see the problem with a fresh, unprejudiced eye, and it's thrilling that my website could be a conduit of data for them. And five, I did not want to write more books on brains and brain research, but figured it would be exciting to learn how to handle a website by myself, having some fun with computers, etc.

Q: And so it's been a long time since your father first read to you from Calvin Hoffman's The Murder of the Man Who Was "Shakespeare." Where do you stand on Calvin Hoffman's theory today?

Bastian: As you know, Carlo, Calvin Hoffman wasn't the first to argue for Marlowe. In 1819/20, William Taylor of Norwich (later identified) wrote anonymously in Monthly Review the idea that Shakespeare was a nom de guerre for Marlowe. And there were others before Hoffman, like Ziegler, Watterson, Webster, and Eagle. But Calvin Hoffman provided the first complete monograph which really brought it all to a head. For me, his is by far the most valuable and plausible hypothesis on the authorship issue. It is painful to learn how Calvin Hoffman and his book have been ridiculed by so-called experts.

In science, you regularly have to work with assumptions and hypotheses. To prove the first hypothesis of the anti-Stratfordians is to give arguments that the Stratford man could not have been the poet and playwright. Having studied the poems and plays of Shakespeare and having created a mental profile of its author, for me the written will of the Stratford man alone would be enough to exclude him forever from the authorship debate. But there is today, as you know, an additional wealth of cumulative negative evidence that works against Shakespeare, even much more than Calvin Hoffman knew at his time. Yet, as I tell my friends, if you choose to stay with Shakespeare after having studied this evidence, you have to leave your mind in the cloakroom. Let's face it, what we know of Shakespeare's private life does not fit with this notion of a highly distinguished and intellectual playwright/poet.

And so it was very important that Samuel Blumenfeld and Daryl Pinksen each published excellent books on the Marlowe theory this year, and they make a highly convincing case as to how a faked death could have been pulled off and how Marlowe's footprints are all over the Shakespeare canon.

I am very interested in scientific methods of how to prove or disprove a highly valuable hypothesis that Marlowe's death had to be faked, and how to demonstrate it on an academic level. Even if we were never to discover any new evidence, already today the positive cumulative evidence - the amount of facts and arguments that exist for a contemporary authorship debate - is so overwhelming that we are forced to take the hypothesis of Marlowe's staged death very seriously. Science often has to work with plausibilities.

The blog is closed

Ted Hughes, British Poet Laureate (1984-1998)

"The way to really develop as a writer is to make yourself a political outcast, so that you have to live in secret. This is how Marlowe developed into Shakespeare."

Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid, Faber 2007, p.120

Welcome to MSC: the Web's #1 Blog on Christopher Marlowe

We kicked off in May 2008. We're a blog dedicated to the brilliant Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Yes, we believe he could have authored many of the Shakespeare works, and so we offer up hearty servings of delicious intrigue. Thanks for visiting!

THE MARLOWE-AS-SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY LAID OUT FOR YOU!

Poets' Corner, London's Westminster Abbey

See the question mark?

THE POWER OF US: KIT Marlowe Up, Earl of Oxford Down

"Meanwhile, the authorship debate shows no signs of fading away. Francis Bacon's star has waned, eclipsed long ago by the Earl of Oxford's. Now Christopher Marlowe's star is on the rise. 'It looks like there's a shelf life to every candidate' of about 75 or 80 years, Shapiro says. 'There's a lot more energy and enthusiasm behind Marlowe.'"

Christopher Marlowe - prodigy, successful playwright/poet, and pretty darn good spy for Queen Elizabeth - lands himself in the kind of hot water that may send him to the gallows. His powerful handlers in espionage, concerned about saving their talented agent, decide to fake his death and send him away. Marlowe, in hiding, continues to write plays and poems. William Shakespeare agrees to be the frontman for these works.

"perfect"

From Amazon: "Rodney Bolt’s book is not an attempt to prove that, rather than dying at 29 in a tavern brawl, Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to Europe, and went on to write the work attributed to Shakespeare. Instead, it takes that as the starting point for a playful and brilliantly written 'fake biography' of Marlowe, which turns out to be a life of the Bard as well." The Spectator praises: "A triumph...perfect." Click the pic to purchase! And click here for our interview with Rodney Bolt!

Buy This!

Wonder who wrote Shakespeare? Mike Rubbo's Much Ado About Something makes a compelling case that it was Marlowe. As seen on PBS Frontline and now on DVD. Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times praises: " . . . an inviting piece of film . . . Much Ado About Something is a film of ideas - well, notions, anyway - that are bound to stimulate discussion, an aspect long missing from documentary." Click the pic to purchase! (or rent it today on Netflix!) Click here for our print interview with Mike Rubbo, click here for our video interview. Click here for an 8-minute preview of the film. Click here for a Tampa Tribune feature about Mike Rubbo.

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